Shriners Hospitals for Crippled Children Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Units
Helping Kids start anew. That's the mission of the three Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Units (SCI Units), housed within the Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco Shriners Hospitals for Crippled Children. These SCI units provide long-term rehabilitative care and intensive physical, occupational and recreational therapy, designed to help spinal cord injured children relearn the basic skills of everyday life. Counseling is also provided to the patients, helping kids learn to cope with their injury and rediscover the fulfilling life that lay ahead for them.
If you know of a
child Shriners Hospitals might be able to help,
please call our toll-free
patient referral line:
In the U.S.: 1-800-237-5055.
In Canada: 1-800-361-7256.
Becoming independent
Developing independence is especially important to kids, particularly teenagers. The Shriners Hospitals SCI Units include kitchen and laundry facilities and other equipment so patients can learn independent living skills, such as cooking meals or ironing clothes.
Teaching self care skills
After a spinal cord injury, many things change. It's not just being unable to walk or move your arms. A spinal cord injury can also affect the nerves and muscles, and can cause bowel and bladder problems, and skin problems. Children are prepared for these changes at Shriners Hospitals SCI Units, and are taught the self care skills necessary to deal with these problems. Parents of spinal cord injured children are not left out; they, too, must learn how to take care of their spinal cord injured child.
Recreational therapy
Having a spinal cord injury doesn't mean that children have to stop participating in fun activities. Shriners Hospitals SCI Units have recreational therapists on staff to show kids that the fun times have just begun. From wheelchair basketball, volleyball, and tennis to specially adapted Nintendo games, all that's required is a little ingenuity.
Research
One of the most exciting spinal cord injury research projects under way at the Philadelphia SCI Unit is called functional neuromuscular stimulation (FNS). FNS has been designed as a tool to restore standing, walking, and hand grasp function to children paralyzed by spinal cord injuries.
When the spinal cord is damaged, communication between the brain and the muscles is interrupted, but the nerves and muscles below the site of injury remain alive and intact. FNS involves using a small electrical currents to excite the muscles that no longer receive signals from the brain, causing an otherwise paralyzed muscle to contract. The electrical current are sent by means of a sophisticated computer system to the peripheral nerves to provide control of the individual muscles.
Although FNS is a research project and not a clinical program, the study will someday help develop a practical FNS system to aid paralyzed children during their daily activities. The FNS research staff is currently working with a small number of highly motivated children who have volunteered to participate in the program. All of these paralyzed children have been able to stand without long leg braces and six have been able to walk short distances. One teen-age girl, named Karen, became the first patient to use the FNS system outside of the hospital. With plenty of encouragement from hospital staff members, other patients, and family Karen established a new walking record of 2,640 feet at a local shopping mall.
BACK